Cannons for the Cause Read online

  Cannons for the Cause

  A Novel of the American Revolution

  MartinR.Ganzglass

  ALSO BY MARTIN R. GANZGLASS Fiction

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  The Penal Code of the Somali Democratic Republic (Cases, Commentary and Examples) The Restoration of the Somali Justice System, Learning From Somalia, The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Clarke & Herbst, Editors

  The Forty-Eight Hour Rule, One Hand Does Not Catch a Buffalo, A. Barlow, Editor Cover: The Noble Train of Artillery, by Tom Lovell. Reproduced with kind permission of the Dixon Ticonderoga Company. All Rights Reserved. The painting is on exhibit at the Fort Ticonderoga Museum.

  For David

  Cannons for the Cause A Peace Corps Writers Book, An imprint of Peace Corps Worldwide

  Copyright © 2014 by Martin R. Ganzglass All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America by Peace Corps Writers of Oakland, California. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations contained in critical articles or reviews.

  For more information, contact [email protected] Peace Corps Writers and the Peace Corps Writers colophon are trademarks of PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org

  This novel is a work of fiction.The historical figures and actual events described are used fictiously.All other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-935925-38-5

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014934074

  First Peace Corps Writers Edition, March 2014

  Note to the Reader Inever intended to serve the entire war in General Knox’s artillery. I did, though, not as a levy but as a teamster and Continental. I first made the General’s acquaintance when he was still a civilian on an important mission for General Washington. I was only fifteen years of age. I look back, from the vantage point of my Seventy One years, on the splendid panorama of the great events in which I participated and am amazed, not that I survived the War for Independence, in which I had many a close call, but that in each armed encounter I acquitted myself with honor. I stood up when the time came. I was not a coward.

  Today, I am not one of those who, sitting before a warm fire on a cold winter night, or on a stone bench in the Village Commons on a fragrant spring day, dwell upon his duty to our Nation, making himself more zealous and faithful, and his actions more heroic and crucial to the cause. Nor am I one of those current pretenders who claim to have been motivated to leave farm and family for the Sacred Cause of Liberty embodied in the now mythical Spirit of ‘76, when all was supposed to be universal patriotism. In fact, if these present-day patriots served at all, they deserted before their enlistment was up, or did not tarry one day beyond their term, or perpetually flew between military camp and farm, being more farmers with muskets then true disciplined soldiers. I saw enough of these militiamen to know.

  Indeed, I myself admit I was drawn into the conflict by accident, protected by a Beneficent God and treated as a son by General Henry Knox, one of the finest men who ever walked this earth. He had the misfortune, after enduring all the risks and hardships of the War, to die choking on a chicken bone in the peaceful tranquility of a dinner among friends. I attended his funeral, but that is another story.

  Mine begins, like the lives of all men, from the humblest individual to the greatest prince, with my birth. I suppose, as my wife would gently remind me, and as Mrs. Knox would assertively interpose, it is also true for the lives of women.

  I was born in 1760 in Schoharie, a town near Albany. My father, George Stoner, a farmer of independent circumstances, accumulated more of his wealth by shrewdly making as much money as possible from the public till, than from tilling crops. Although he did drive a hard bargain for those as well.

  He was a wagoner during the French and Indian War, hauling supplies from Albany to the head of Lake George and, on occasion, bringing bodies of Officers back for burial in the city. Unlike others in this trade, my father, sensing the opportunity brought on by the necessity of supplying the army with victuals, tents and blankets, horses and wagons, of which there were too few to meet the need, had bought up horses that were definitely not in prime condition, and constructed wagons that would not have lasted more than five miles on the roads of those days. He signed up with Colonel Bradstreet with four wagons, each pulled by two teams of these spindly-legged, swaybacked nags. In the first week out, as was the custom, all of the wagoners turned the horses out for forage. My father pretended all but three were lost and ostensibly went to look for them, leaving a young hired lad to continue on the arduous journey north with but a team of two. Father then returned to the farm, harvested his crops and when his time was nearly run for the period he had been engaged, presented himself at headquarters in Albany and received the full amount of his stipulated wages and handsome payment in compensation for his “lost” horses. He was that type of man.

  He smelled another such opportunity in November 1775, when there was talk rife in Albany of the need for teamsters to haul cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, recently captured from the British by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, to General Washington, who was investing General Howe and the British Army in Boston. General Knox, then a private citizen awaiting his Colonel’s Commission, arrived in Albany on December 1st. His presence and purse and his association with General Philip Schuyler, a much respected and prominent person in our locality, gave confirmation to what had simply been tavern talk and speculation.

  Knox’s agent, an experienced Quartermaster and formerly the Manager of General Schuyler’s estates, could not be fooled by nags and shoddily built slapdash carts. My father presented himself, two well-made sleds and a wagon, ten horses accustomed to farm work and quite sturdy in their frame, and me, Willem Stoner, for hire on this grand expedition.

  My father received a better than fair price, knowing of the unavailability of sleds, wagons and teams. Reluctantly, the agent agreed to a bit above the normal pay, one-half paid in advance in British pound sterling, the other half payable upon completion of the journey. Our engagement was to travel empty from Albany to Ft. George with a return trip heavily loaded past Albany, across the Hudson and through the mountains to the border with the Province of Massachusetts. The cannons, fifty-nine in number, ranging from one to eleven feet in length and one hundred to more than 5,000 pounds, together with flint, shot and balls were ferried by boat down the Lake from Ft. Ticonderoga to our meeting place at Ft. George.

  My father’s natural greed and Divine Providence intervened, so that I continued on with the expedition to Boston, while my father returned to Schoharie and the farm. I never saw him again. He died in 1781, caught alone by Tories and marauding Indians in the woods near Saratoga. What he was doing there I do not know. My stepmother buried his scalped body on our farm. My brother Johan, originally apprenticed to a dry goods merchant in Boston, never returned to Schoharie. He eventually sailed to London and died there. The less said about him the better.

  As for me, I was given up for dead. When my stepmother remarried, her new husband, Andrew Ten Broek inherited our farm and all the appurtenanced property. After the War, I could have proferred my claim as the sole surviving son but I surmised it would have been futile. Ten Broek was well connected with the landed Aristocracy, and Justice likely would have been rendered in his Favor. Thus, did our War for Independence fulfill for me the fine words of the great Declaration that all men are created equal. However, I had learned much in General Knox’s service. His friendsh
ip opened doors of opportunity for me in the mercantile trade, enabling me, after the War, to prosper and support my family in New York City. That too is another story.

  I have in common with many garrulous men of a certain age to digress from the tale at hand. The best course is to begin at the beginning and tell it chronologically from what is now known as the great trek of the Noble Train of Artillery from Fort George to Cambridge in the bitter cold winter of December 1775 to late January 1776, and to let the subsequent retreats, battles, defeats and victories fall into their appointed places. As I said, I was fifteen years old when my father signed his name to the roster Colonel Knox kept to transport the cannons down from Fort George to the Massachusetts border. From there, others were to bring them to menace the powerful British fleet lying in Boston Harbor.

  Over the past two years, recognizing that my time on this earth is surely coming to an end, I have told my story to my grandson, William Stoner II, who has the good fortune to be formally educated at Princeton, a place I know well from the bloody action there in which I participated. He has faithfully copied down the details as I have related them. He is an intelligent young man and I do not say that because he is my grandson. In the course of relating my adventures, he has asked many probing questions, compelling me to reveal much of what I had kept hidden in the deep recesses of my mind.

  However, he has some concept, acquired at college from reading the great authors, to present my life, not as a memoir, as I intended, but as a Novel. My grandson fancies himself a writer and affirms he will be precise as to the events I participated in, and my feelings as he knows them to be. He promises to add other characters only after the most thorough research and verification as to their actions and the events as they witnessed them. Since he is my only grandson and my namesake, I am inclined to indulge him.

  I am familiar with novels, having been given my first one on the Great Trek by Colonel Knox himself. I have read many in my time and enjoyed some more than others. However, I find it difficult to distinguish what is true about the actions described in them and what originated in the author’s imagination. I hope you find that my grandson has scrupulously depicted the historical facts and that your reading is not burdened by fictitious or exaggerated events.

  While I do not approve of my grandson’s diversion from my original intent to write a memoir, he has my blessing to proceed as he wishes, provided that his Novel is not published in my lifetime.

  Therefore, Dear Reader, as you turn this page and begin this book, handsomely bound I hope, you know I am in the Great Beyond, together with my Beloved Wife, dining with General and Mrs. Knox, followed by a game of cards, Mrs. Knox being greatly addicted to such diversions, and occasionally, between hands, looking down on you with bemused curiosity as you read my grandson’s account of my youthful adventures and the War which brought you Your Independence.

  Willem Stoner, May 16, 1831 “The route will be from Fort George to Kinderhook, from thence to Great Barrington, and down to Springfield. From Saratoga, trusting that we shall have a fine fall of snow, which will enable us to proceed further, and make the carriage easy. If that shall be the case, I hope in sixteen or seventeen days’ time to be able to present to your Excellency a noble train of artillery.”

  Colonel Henry Knox at Fort George, New York to General George Washington, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

  December 17, 1775

  Prologue The large flat-bottomed scow was beginning to founder. Strong winds blowing toward them from the southern end of Lake George whipped the icy waters over the gunnels. The ungainly vessel, already low in the water with its load of twenty-three cannons, some weighing more than a ton, was turning sideways.

  Ensign Nathaniel Holmes silently cursed the contrary winds, which had made their two sails useless. He cursed the inept and clumsy Continentals from Fort Ticonderoga, weak and thin-as-rail soldiers he had been compelled to use as rowers for the voyage down Lake George. If he just had four Marblehead Mariners from his Regiment, experienced fishermen who could bring a dory through any nor’easter, he could have kept the boat steady and rowed until the winds had ceased. No sense wishing for what he did not have.

  They were more than one hundred yards off the promontory jutting out into the menacing waves. If they sank closer to shore it was possible to save the cannons. He tied down the tiller. The rudder was as worthless now as the sails. Jumping up on the narrow walkway, he grabbed the twelve-foot-long sweep oar from the nearest soldier on the starboard side.

  “Go forward and double up with the one rowing ahead of you,” he yelled over the wind. “And tell the one ahead to do the same, up to the prow.” The soldier looked at him bewildered.

  “Two of you on each oar all along the walkway,” he shouted. “Hurry, or this scow will break apart and we will drown.” Fear will make them put their backs into it, he thought.

  His plan was to strengthen the rowers on the starboard side and keep the prow pointed forward as much as possible. The soldiers rowing on the left side would barely help to steady the craft. He hoped the action of the waves would push the scow toward shore. The race between their rowing and the amount of water they were taking on would determine whether the boat sank in deep water or closer to the shoreline.

  Nathaniel looked at the promontory, called Sabbath Day Point. The rocky granite finger with low scrub pines seemed nearer, maybe less than fifty yards away. Still too far, he concluded, using the sweep oar to probe the depth. If we sink here, it will be too deep to easily raise the cannons. They would lose more than a third of the artillery Colonel Knox had selected from Fort Ticonderoga- cannons urgently needed by General Washington to drive the British army from Boston.

  He planted his feet and leaned his broad shoulder into the oar, timing his stroke to the pair in front of him. The poor fools did not even know how to pull together. Better for him to do two to every one of theirs. Nathaniel glanced at the water sloshing around the lashed-down cannons. The scow was riding lower and becoming more unmanageable. A series of waves crashed over the gunnels and drove the wallowing craft sideways. Nathaniel plunged his oar straight down. It struck bottom. Less than twelve feet deep. He ran to the other side of the scow.

  “Use your oars as poles to push us toward shore,” he shouted, motioning for the soldiers on the starboard side to join him. One man leaned too far out as he thrust against his oar, lost his footing on the slippery walkway and fell into the water. Two others dropped their oars and leaned over to pull their comrade out. The oars quickly disappeared in the roiling white caps. The waves continued to drive the scow sideways closer to the Point.

  Nathaniel judged them to be near enough and ordered them all to jump from the starboard side.

  “With your haversacks,” he shouted, throwing one after a soldier who was already in the water, thrashing about like a frightened calf although his feet had touched bottom.

  The men waded through the frigid, chest-deep water, crunched through the thin layer of ice at the shoreline and collapsed on the gravel beach. The scow lay less than fifteen feet off shore, its gunnels above water. Nat knew they needed to build a fire to survive the cold December night.

  “Sergeant,” Nathaniel called to a soldier leaning exhausted on one knee with his head bowed. “Organize your men into work parties.”

  The Sergeant laboriously hauled himself up. He walked slowly, almost insolently so and when he was close, he bent his tall lanky frame forward. Nat could smell the rum on his breath.

  “We are on land now, Mr. Ensign Holmes. You are no longer in command,” he snarled. He rubbed his chest under his dripping wet jacket and brazenly dropped his right arm to his waist. His fingers curled around the bone handle of a large sheathed hunting knife.

  Nathaniel resisted the urge to smash the Sergeant in the mouth and knock out his brown stubs of teeth. He looked at the darkening sky and glanced at some of the soldiers greedily emptying their canteens. In another hour they would be drunk on rum and unable to stand. He needed them in th
e morning to bail out the scow. Then, if necessary he could sail it by himself to Fort George.

  “I say the men rest, and rest they shall,” the Sergeant said, daring Nathaniel to contradict him. “ Tis fourteen to one.”

  “We need to build fires for all to keep warm,” Holmes replied calmly. “They can rest later around the bonfires. The work will keep them from freezing until then.” Nathaniel pointed at some of the soldiers curled up where they had fallen. “I have seen men, soaked from the ocean, succumb to numbing, comforting sleep, never to awake again. Is that how you want them to die?”

  The Sergeant turned back toward the exhausted, wet men lying in frozen heaps on the beach. Nathaniel did not wait. He walked to the edge of the pine forest carrying one of the few axes they had. Two other soldiers soon joined him.

  “Fell the shorter trees first,” he said, gesturing to the low scrub pines. The sooner they got any fire going and the men felt its warmth, the better they would understand the necessity to cut more trees.

  Several soldiers fanned out through the woods searching for kindling on the ground. Others trimmed the branches from the downed trees with their bayonets and knives. They quickly started two small fires, the bright dancing flames guiding those in the woods back to their pitiful encampment on the shore.

  Two hours later, Nathaniel was the only one still wielding an axe. The others had retired to the large bonfires, standing in front of them, turning this way and that, to warm their bodies and dry their uniforms. He chopped down three more trees and strode back to the beach.

  “Have your men bring those trees in, lop off the limbs and top them off,” he said to the Sergeant. “With these three, we should have enough wood to last us through the night.” The Sergeant pointed at five men closest to one fire. The men groaned in protest. Sullenly, they left the heat of the bonfire, stumbling and slipping on the ice-coated rocks and disappeared into the woods.